As he was led to the cinder block cells at the rear of the compound Shan passed a small storage building. He recognized it from Meng’s description as the place where the German’s body had been taken, and broken with a hammer. He glanced back at Liang, gloating in the window of the headquarters. Shan began to wonder if Liang’s brutal beating of the corpse had just been in spite.
Like every cell block Shan had ever entered, the air was acrid with the scent of urine, vomit, and bleach. His escort led him silently past a table with a chalkboard at its side, and shoved him into the center cell of a row of three empty cells.
It was just another of Liang’s lies, Shan tried to tell himself as he stared at the imprisonment order the major had stuffed inside his shirt, one of the tactics Liang used to bully possible informers. But he had seen the hate burning in the major’s eyes. There had been no pretense in them. He despised Shan for having deceived him and wanted him to die a slow death in the desert. He sank onto the cell’s flimsy cot, elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. He tried to think only of Lokesh, of his friend wandering down one of his beloved pilgrim paths but Liang’s threats kept echoing in his mind. The Taklamakan. He had spent weeks in one of the desert’s prisons before being sent to Tibet. The buildings, and the prisoners, had been etched with the hot blowing sand so that even the newest and youngest had an aged, corroded appearance. Sandstorms kept shifting the dunes, exposing ruins and turning barracks into sand-bound bunkers overnight. In his nightmares he still saw one of the common graves from years past that been gouged out by the wind. Protruding from a wall of sand had been the skeletal feet of a hundred prisoners.
He paced the cell with a prisoner’s eye, counting the steps in a circuit, noting a mouse hole under the cot, gleaning a piece of chalk that had rolled across the floor and lodged against the iron bars. Finally he lifted the pad and pencil left on the stool by the cot, staring at the blank paper for a long time. Xiao Ko, he wrote at last. Young Ko. His son. He was due for a visit with Ko in two days, a visit he knew now he would never make. They were both to be in the gulag now, in what the prisoners often called the belly of the dragon. He traced his son’s name with trembling fingertips. The wrenching sentences formed in his mind but his hand was unable to move the pencil.
I am going away to the Taklamakan. The next time you see me I will be in the row of skeletons emerging from the dune. It wasn’t supposed to end this way, Ko. We were going to build a little cabin in the mountains with Lokesh and forget all the miseries of the world below. But the dragon ate me after all.
A hard black thing seemed to grow inside, until he felt only a cold emptiness. A Tibetan prisoner, a middle-aged man, was shoved into the cell beside him. The man began weeping.
* * *
The Tibetan prisoner cried until the middle of the night, then he sat in the center of his cell and stared at the round drain plate in the cement floor.
“Om mani padme hum,” the man intoned in a sorrowful voice.
Shan stepped to the bars and extended his prayer beads toward the man. The Tibetan gazed at him in surprise then silently rose and accepted the mala. He returned to his place on the floor, sat down, and slowly began reciting the beads. As he spoke a new strength entered his voice.
Shan watched for a long moment, then turned to the little stool where he had left the paper and began writing.
I saw a hawk today flying high overhead, rising in the wind until he was a speck in the southwest sky. I realized at that moment that he could see both where I sat and where you sat. Maybe you saw him too.
Ko, it will be a long time before you hear from me again. It could be that they will move you to punish me. But know that as soon as I am able I will start searching for you and I will not stop until I find you. Meanwhile listen to the guards. But first, always, listen to the lamas.
He wrote on only half the sheet, so he could fold it twice, making its own envelope. Shan Ko, he wrote on the outside. 404th People’s Construction Brigade.
In the early morning hours he awoke. There was no light but the dim reflection cast from the entryway light. A silent shape sat at the interrogation table, masked in shadow, facing Shan. The silhouette, a figure in a stiff uniform with a high-brimmed cap, told him it was one of Liang’s lackeys, no doubt there to underscore Liang’s message. Shan took the stool to the front of the cell and sat, facing the knob. It was a prisoner’s game, and he was alarmed at how readily it came back to him. The fear may ravage your gut, may hollow you out, but you can never let them see it.
He lost track of how long he stared at the shadow figure. Moonlight moved across the floor. The Tibetan prisoner murmured on, his mantra sometimes coming out in sobs. Shan wasn’t staring at another knob, he was staring at a wraith, at the dark soulless phantom that was his government.
He was so fatigued, so caught in the spell, that he gasped when he suddenly realized the wraith had risen and was moving toward him. The light was so dim its face was unclear until it stopped in front of him. It was no wraith, it was Lieutenant Meng, a pale and brittle Meng in a starched uniform with her hair tightly tied behind her head.
Meng opened her mouth but her tongue found no words. Shan pulled the folded letter from his pocket and shoved it through the bars. She hesitated, as if scared of the paper, then with a quick motion grabbed it and stuffed it inside her tunic. She did not look at him, but spun about and marched back to the table, where she made a show of opening the drawer and pulling out another paper. She crushed his letter, threw the wad into the trash can, and then walked back, tossing the new paper into his cell before leaving. Another prisoner assignment form.
Shan stared in confusion as Meng disappeared into the compound. He sighed, then turned back to sit on the cot. After a long time he rose, picked up the piece of chalk and whispered to the Tibetan.
He was asleep on the cot when the surprised shout of a guard awakened him. Early morning light filtered through the window. The Tibetan still sat on the floor, though he was singing a quiet song now. The guard ran out of the building and returned moments later with two more guards. All three men began shouting angrily, pointing at Shan, then the Tibetan, then the little creatures placed around their cells and the circle on the Tibetan’s floor. Using Shan’s chalk and his careful instructions, the Tibetan had created a mandala around the round drain plate in the floor. Using the entire pad of paper meant for his confession Shan had created origami birds. Small flocks roosted on the windowsills of the two cells, others were scattered around the cells. One guard ran back to the doorway, to warn his comrades of any approaching officer as the others opened the cell doors, cursing the two grinning prisoners as they quickly gathered up the birds and scuffed away the prayer circle with their boots.
With angry taps of their batons they pushed Shan against a wall, then fastened manacles to his feet before dragging him to the interrogation table. They disappeared and returned with a tepid cup of tea, which he slowly sipped. He made a show of stretching, ignoring his watchers to better survey the area around the table. His gaze lingered on the chair where Meng had sat for so long, watching him, then he scanned the walls and ceiling.
The small black instrument blended into the shadows of the corner where walls and ceiling met. A camera. Meng had sat in the only chair that was invisible to the camera that monitored the room, had kept her back to it and her head bent so she would not have been identified when she had stepped to his cell.